


Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

by orphan_account



Category: Biggles series - WE Johns
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bertie rarely felt as if he belonged anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosied/gifts).



> I wanted to write so much more than this! I love Bertie to death. Here's a bit of backstory.

The problem with public school, as far as Bertie was concerned, was that it made it blasted difficult to determine whether or not one was normal. For a certain value of "normal", of course -- Bertie had been at school with a chap whose father was an Indian prince, and there he was just sitting doing algebra and complaining about the rotten food like any old commoner. But the thing was, when everyone was fumbling around in the showers with other boys and developing frantic pashes on the prettier first formers, it meant that one never had to think too much about what one really wanted out of life. Bertie was eighteen and at Oxford before it occurred to him that he'd never felt the same frissons of excitement his pals did when a party from one of the women's colleges came over for dinner. On the contrary, he missed the simplicity of school, where one only had to smile a certain way and wiggle one's fingers to bag an illicit encounter in the lav, and even, possibly, a kiss. 

The kissing, Bertie realised too late, had always been his favourite part. 

Not normal, then. His mother was going to be bitterly disappointed. The only thing to do was to ensure that she never found out. 

Bertie's mother was the sort of woman who didn't realise Men Like That really existed, which, on the one hand, made things easier in that she was highly unlikely to draw any conclusions from her son's choice of companions and appreciation for Savile Row's finest. The more Bertie thought about it, the more he suspected his own late father may have had more than a touch of a propensity, as it were, and she'd never spotted a bally thing. The problem was, Bertie could just as well imagine a woman so oblivious being determined to set up her son with a nice girl and refusing to take no for an answer, and even if his father had managed that for King and Country and all that, Bertie was fairly certain he hadn't the fortitude. 

So, Monaco. 

In Monaco, a chap could be anything. Bertie was a decent enough tennis player and had a certain amount of luck in the casino, which seemed to be all one needed, plus a well-to-do accent and a suit for every occasion. In Monaco, one could be a spy, a gambler, an aristocrat, a sportsman: whatever one fancied at any given moment. One could also, as Bertie soon discovered, be whatever one's own measure of normality dictated. 

The first chap who looked his way was a waiter at one of the casinos. Young, slender, olive skinned boy, but with dark eyes that were cunning and made Bertie's chest fill with heat. Kissing him was nothing like the snatched things he'd managed at school, from boys who thought it perfectly justifiable to borrow a pal for a wank, but felt that kissing was really taking it all too bally far. The Monegasque boy had a soft mouth that knew its business, and Bertie was hooked. England had nothing to offer that could compete with this sort of openness, the soaring sense of freedom. 

If it hadn't been for the War, Bertie might still have been there. Frankly, he couldn't imagine anything else that might have dragged him back from the strange paradise Monaco had become. But there had always been a sense of unreality about it, the niggling tense feeling that one day, this would have to end and Bertie would have to do something with himself, if only for his own peace of mind. He wasn't sure what it was about flying that appealed to him at first, but the moment he was in the air, he knew he'd made the right decision. 

On the ground, as always, it was another matter. The other chaps were, for the most part, younger and sturdier than him; they made fun of his lisp and his dog (as if Bertie would go anywhere without Towser) behind his back, until one day some foolish youth thought to do it to his face. Bertie would put up with many things, but not that kind of insolence, not when he'd learned to box in Monaco, at any rate. So, on the ground, he gained a kind of grudging respect, but in the air -- the air was the mistress he never thought he would have. This truly was freedom. 

He was never, apparently, a good pilot. Bertie himself rather disagreed: he knocked more spots off Jerry than anyone else managed, and if he had his fun doing it, then what was the trouble? The flight loot said his flying was horrible to look at, but then, so was the flight loot, so Bertie didn't pay it much mind. The RAF might not want him, but he wanted it, fiercely and with an unaccustomed sense of certainty. 

The day he arrived at 666 Squadron, he hadn't much hope that anything would be different. They'd singled him out as an oddball, and here he'd be among some other oddballs, but they'd still be sure to think Bertie the oddest. But he didn't mind. There was a plane for him to fly after all, and who cared if the lads were just the same as always? Bertie was the same as always too. People couldn't help what they were, and besides, this was war. One just kept on.

He didn't expect Biggles. Few people did: he was such an unexpected sort of chap. Bertie had expected someone brusque and sturdy, perhaps with a moustache, and instead, here was this slight fair man who looked younger than he surely must be, pale hazel eyes that looked grey in the dawn light as he roused them for their dawn patrols. Here was Biggles, nothing like Bertie and yet somehow more like him than anyone else he'd ever met. Here was Biggles, nothing to prove and yet everything to play for, and Bertie felt a tug inside him for the first time. Loyalty, he thought it was. It felt strange, a push behind his breastbone. 

"Come on, Lissie," Biggles snapped, "What are you gazing into the distance like that for? Get in the machine, there's a good chap." And then, under his breath, with a shake of his head, "You're an odd cove." There was a smile at the corner of Biggles's mouth. 

"So I've been informed," Bertie told him cheerfully. For the first time, he didn't mind hearing it, not the way Biggles said it, almost affectionately. 

No man is an island, so they said. Perhaps they were right after all. Perhaps there was somewhere in England where Bertie might belong.


End file.
